Manage your subscription

Nations are taking action on climate change

It may be climate change’s best-kept secret. While global talks founder, national governments are passing legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions – a Plan B for fighting climate change that was hatched at 2010 climate talks in Cancun.

This optimistic message is at the centre of a new London School of Economics analysis, published by GLOBE International, a group of environment-minded parliamentarians. Of 33 major economies, 32 have now passed legislation to either combat climate change or improve energy efficiency, the analysis suggests, with industrialising countries like China, Mexico and South Korea at the forefront.

These national measures are not enough, of course – the World Bank recently concluded that the world is still heading for 4 degrees of warming by 2100 – but national measures may help enable a global emissions-cutting deal in time for the 2015 UN target date.

“Only if national regulatory frameworks are in place will it be possible to reach an agreement in 2015,” says GLOBE secretary Adam Matthews. There is no Plan C.